“If ants had a language they would, no doubt, call their anthill an artifact and describe the brick wall in its neighborhood as a natural object. Nature in fact would be for them all that was not 'ant-made'.”

“Can a single ant be said to be alive, in any meaningful sense of the word, or does it only have relevance in terms of its anthill?”

“One brick is not a wall. Unless you’re an ant, and then it’s not only a wall, it’s a building—a building that has no doors, windows, or people in the form of managers that I’d like to smash in the face with a building (or a brick).
”

“A brick is a fraction of a building, and a brick is like a building—if you're like an ant.
”

“Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement... anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation.”

“Like it or not, war is distinctively human. Apart from the raiding behavior of chimpanzees and the so-called wars prosecuted by certain species of ant, there is nothing in nature that comes anywhere near approximating it.”